A conventional strip-shaped print medium (e.g., print tape) is often wound and contained in a print medium cartridge. Such a print medium cartridge is configured to be installed in a printer having a printing head. A user of the printer can select a print medium cartridge containing a print medium having a specific width to install it into the printer. Assume that print medium having different widths need to be used with respective cartridges that are different from each other. Then, the cartridges can be formed on the same basic design concept if they are made to have a large height as viewed in the winding direction of the print medium, although the widths of the print medium contained in the respective cartridges may be different from each other. As a result, alterations that need to be made to the design of the cartridge for containing a print medium having a specific width can be minimized, if necessary. Therefore, as general practice, the cross sections of cartridges for containing print medium having different widths as taken in a direction perpendicular to the axis of winding of the print medium are made to show a substantially same contour.
Thus, printers are designed to have an inner space for mounting a print medium cartridge on the assumption that the cross sections of cartridges containing respective print medium having different widths are made to show the substantially same contour for the purpose of downsizing the printers, although the widths of the print medium may be taken into consideration.
However, as a result of making the cross sections of print medium cartridges show the same contour, the size of the print medium is subjected to limitations when it is wound up due to the contour of the cross section (the radius of the wound print medium). Then, the length of the print medium needs to be limited. Besides, cartridges are made to have an only limited space for containing the print medium in the inside as a result of the efforts paid for downsizing the printer and the print medium cartridge. Therefore, the length of the wound print medium is limited also for this reason. Thus, the print medium cartridge needs to be replaced frequently when a printing operation needs to be conducted on a large scale.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a printer for which the user can select one of print medium cartridges containing respective print medium having different lengths or different thickness per unit length and in which the user can install the selected print medium, and also a print medium cartridge that can be used with such a printer.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer in which some different kinds of print medium cartridges can be installed.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an non-standard cartridge that can be installed in a printer in place of a standard cartridge.